Pinterest for men?

What's the point here or Pinterest behind this latest form of social networking and is it for men? I'm a social network geek and find it's just a part of life these days, people want or feel they need to stay connected with others. That being said, I had wondered what all of those little boxes I saw scrolling across my wife's monitor really meant.

Her Pinterest had peeked my interest enough and I decided I would give it a closer look. There was something very familiar at the start, but I wasn't quite sure.

My first look into Pinterest came from the Pinspiration App I downloaded on my Windows Phone 7 device. I quickly found out I could see all kinds of stuff, but I would need to actually get invited in, if I wanted to contribute with the masses.

Surprisingly, it didn't take as long as it does to get into some of Google programs and if you happen to know someone that uses Pinterest, then I'm sure you can get invited by them even faster if you like.

Once you've been invited, its pretty simple to select from a few things you find interesting to follow and they'll even give you some suggestions of people using Pinterest to follow and help hook you up with those in your existing social networks like Facebook and Twitter even.

Now its time for you to start pining up some things on your social cork board, so your followers may see what interests you. These interest boards allow you to group things into categories of interest from your real life and place them into a virtual space to share with others.

How you might ask? From web sites to start with and the handy Pin It button they suggest you add to your Favorites Bar. When you visit something on the web that speaks to you enough and want to keep track of it, simply Pin It and place it in one of your Pinterest Boards. It will launch the small window and hopefully find the image on the page you would like to share. You might even find a number of sites have integrated a Pinterest button within their site for you as well.

Smart phone apps is another way and this allows you to create from your very own images taken while your out and about. Its always nice to use your own photos, while out and about for sharing your interests with others.

Is it for men? Well, I can clearly say the demographics appear to be heavily slanted towards a female user base. It does seem to really speak to a person that wants to organize certain aspects of their life on a visual basis. It is very popular with Brides for example and allows them to carry an extreme amount of visual aids, right at their finger tips or add to these wedding planning Pinterests for example.

If you scroll through the Everything section on Pinterest to start with, you'll find an enormous amount of fashion pinned, along with food & drink or home decor stuff for example. Pretty much things that interest women for the most part... nice things to look at for sure, but most of it will not speak to a guy really. I would say you would be hard pressed to find around 5 percent of the pins on the front page appeal to a man.

So what's the point then? Well in a lot of ways its just a visual book marking or collection of favorites of sites and things you like and a means to share these things with others. Twitter is for posting small bits of things your interested in text or sharing perhaps a quick photo, but not a means to organize them. Facebook is similar but it does a lot more than Twitter does. So Pinterest is like a virtual scrapbook & clippings of things you like, but on more of a social level.

Some guys use it, but it's a small number of us I'd say and I'm almost willing to bet, a large number of men sign up and simply lurk and never pin things really. This brings me back to my thought at the start, I'd seen this somewhere before and it was from a site called ImgSpark that lets you create Mood Boards, only two of them and it limits you to only a gig of space.

Sometime back in 2009 is when ImgSpark.Com was created and I had joined their site back around May of 2010. This was only a couple months after the launch of Pinterest. It's only recently now that I've discovered Pinterest.

I think Pinterest clearly does things that ImgSpark is not capable of and it has a much larger user base. Is it for men though? Well, its not like they keep us from using it. It's just really up to the man in the end and if he has any real Pinterest in sharing I suppose.

Family Dinner time

Our family dinner time is headed for real change here in 2012, as we look to try something different for a change. For starters, we are going to try and not eat out and instead prepare our meals at home together as a family more.

In doing this we are going to prepare only one meal that the whole family will eat and enjoy together. We will also plan these meals out in advance for the next two weeks and stick with it. That means no more sitting around and asking, "What do we want to have for dinner tonight?" and it also means we will not make something different for just the kids and us to eat.

When I was younger and it came time for dinner, I was called to the table and we ate what ever was made for the night. There was no pre-planning as far as I knew it and I found out what we were eating as soon as I sat down with the family. Surprise, you get what you get and you don't throw any fits in the end.

Truth is I never had any problems with this really and I wasn't too picky of an eater growing up. So getting my kids to understand that they have to try new things and eat better will be an experience perhaps, but I think we'll do fine and they seem to be receptive so far to this new idea.

To start things off we've themed our dinners and set something different for each day of the week. We've went ahead and decided to keep the same day themes for both of the weeks to help make it simple too.

The girls seem to like the idea of themed meals and are planning to locate music that ties in with each nights dinner theme. I think it should be a lot of fun for all of us. Good food, cool music, and great family time for the evening.

The creation of Sunday Specials should be very interesting and we've decided to select places from around the World. We dropped Six countries into a hat to start with and South African & Brazilian have been selected as our first two Sunday Specials themed dinners. I think these might be the hardest ones to come up with out of the six, but we'll rise up to the challenge.

Hopefully this will also help us get organized a bit where meals come in to play and help us save some money with the buying of our food in advance by eating at home. This should also bring us together more and I think we'll enjoy our meals as a family and perhaps learn about some new places and foods as well.

Lobbyist for the day down in Austin

Tomorrow is shaping up to be a rather busy day for me, as I'll be spending it down in Austin as a Lobbyist and helping to represent other fellow Horse enthusiasts from all over the state of Texas. The American Paint Horse Association is sending a little over 25 of its Staff members down to join other Horse groups from across the state for Horsemen Day at the Capitol, its purpose is to show support in numbers for HB 2111/HJR 111 & SB 1118/SRJ 33 on the steps of the Capitol.


Hopefully together we can help push things along tomorrow and get these items added to a future vote here in Texas. The amendments purpose would then allow slot machines at 13 existing licensed racetracks and three federally-recognized Indian reservations and its efforts would keep gambling money that many Texans spend in neighboring states here in Texas instead.

While visiting with my State Representative and Senator tomorrow, I also hope to express my concerns about the proposed Education cuts being made and that they reconsider looking into other options, including the Rainy Day Fund that was setup for times such as this.

I know the efforts of Win For Texas and Save Texas Schools are good causes and something Texas really needs at this time. Let the people have a say and vote on these topics and I encourage all Texans to looking to this efforts and contact your Representative and Senator to let your voice be heard.

The work behind closed doors

Looks like I might be getting an actual office of my own at last. Granted, its a bit of a small office of sorts, but an office just the same. Over the many years of working in IT, I've been in a Cube environment all of this time, but this might change really soon.

The past 11 years have been the same as always, but lately a progression towards real walls of sorts has been in the making. The current IT department has pretty much been a big open room, from the time I first joined them. So open at first, it was like an island of connected desks with only a few very minor walls to divide us up.

This changed though with a few higher walls and that created some Cubes for a few of us. I found myself facing one of those huge cube walls, but with a bit of an open environment to my back. So half of our department needed walls it seemed, to help us cut down on some of these distractions it seems.

Well, the distractions haven't gone away and in a lot of cases, we now have many more distractions and so the answer to cut down on these distractions is to build real walls and install doors. We are looking at creating six offices; measuring 10 x 7 or 7 x 10, depending on how you look at things.

I'm trying to picture how this is going to be when its done, we'll have a walkway down the middle of a decent size room, that is pretty much cube areas now, and so later on it will look like a long hallway, that has six private offices for us.

I'm looking forward to this really, the thought of a private office to work in is awesome sounding. I think a cozy little 10 x 7 room with my own door that I can shut is just what I really need. I just hope its cost effective and the right decision to make in the end.

Some of the past cube areas I've had were not to bad, some were quite roomy really and fairly private. I'm not sure if we have larger cube walls or even normal walls, to help make our areas more private cube areas, I think that could even cut down on some of the current distractions.

So looking towards full walls and a real door is what might be coming my way instead. I do feel I can get a bit more done, when I tend to be more on my own at times though. Don't get me wrong here, I love team work and I work well with others I think. I just feel at times it can be much better and I can be more creative with less distractions in our area.

The past couple of weeks I found myself snowed in and thanks to our VPN, I was able to find a quite place at home and get a bunch of work stuff done from home. Back at work, you have people coming and going all the time, add in the water cooler talk, plus hearing every ones daily phone conversations, and much more with seven of us in semi open work environment. Its no wonder that I find myself spending most of my time with headphones on and trying to tune as much out as I can.

Well not for much longer, if the plans for walls and doors go through. I'll find myself strolling into work and making my way into my own private IT Cell, I mean small private office and I'll simply shut my door to get things done. I can continue to Skype the others in IT like always and hopefully find some inner peace at last, from suddenly working in a distraction free zone at last.

Or... I can pray for many more Snow days here in Texas or other reasons to keep me working from home instead at times.

Do You Wanna Touch?

I started watching the film The Runaways (2010), starring Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett, who was one of the founding members of the all-girl rock group, The Runnaways, and this suddenly brought back memories of the first Live concert I had attended as a teenager.

My wife had started up the movie via Netflix tonight and I wasn't sure what I was about to watch here at the start and was really surprised to see how much Kristen Stewart looked like Joan Jett and then I realized what this movie was really going to be about.

So a little later on into the film you see Joan Jett at rock club and can hear a version of "Do You Wanna Touch" by Gary Glitter being played, which happens to be one of my favorite songs that was covered later by Joan Jett during her solo career. I decided to search and see if I could find the original video here on the web, you have to just love the Internet for stuff like this.



I really like the Joan Jett & The Black Hearts version and I can remember very well when this version of the video actually hit Mtv... yes, way back in the day when they actually played music videos and when it was a cool station to watch. But I also remember attending her concert at Six Flags Over Texas and I believe the Live footage of the concert fans was in fact filmed out in that parking lot concert area. Some where in that crowd of fans just might be me waving my arms in the air.



I've seen her live only one other time since then and I'm much older now, but I think she still Rocks! I enjoyed the movie and learning more about the Runaways as well.

I did it! I'm a Super Model Now

Well I broke into my weight goal range of 206 to 212 lbs and right on schedule I might add at that. It's been really hard to diet this time of year, but I hung in there and stuck to it the best I could. I think I was about 96% strict and followed the rules of the diet program.

The hardest thing for me on this diet had to be giving up all the sweets and I mean all of them. Not a single piece of Candy, Cookie, Cake, or whatever treat you could imagine this time of year. I'm talking zero tolerance here now. But its all worth it in the end and this diet program really worked. Amazing to eat just what they said I should and not even work out at all. The pounds just fell off during the 12 weeks I was on this and my clothes are falling off as well.

So I dodged all of the Halloween Candies and I managed to avoid all the Thanksgiving Pies. Last week was really hard to resist the Chocolate Cake. I could smell the sugar as I sat close by, but I kept myself from pouncing and taking a bite of that forbidden desert. But I remained strong and reached my 12 week goal.

That brings us to Christmas Eve and that means a tradition is coming for me that I will not break. I always watch "It's a Wonderful Life" and pour myself a nice glass of Egg Nog to enjoy. So to celebrate my reaching my goal of a new lesser me in the weight area. I'll have a tiny glass of Egg Nog tonight and I'll still enjoy my movie. I've got a lot to be thankful for this year in the end and I think I can allow myself this little bit in the cheating area now.


My New Years resolution for 2011 is to remain skinny, stay healthy and be the best super model I can be. Thanks family for all the support and praise you've given me.

I'm melting away

I'm closing in now on the last couple weeks of my diet and I only have around 8 to 10lbs left to drop. To think that this diet would actually work as well as it has and with out working out at all was a big surprise to me.

I'm now looking forward to the next phase that they call re-feeding and seeing how I'm able to reintroduce the foods that I like back into my diet. I'm also looking forward to starting somewhat of a workout program to help maintain my weight.

I feel so much better now and I'm lighter than I would have ever imagined too, all of this thanks to Dr. Cohen's 1st Personal Diet. But its far from over, I can't let things go back to the way it was before and I need to make sure that I maintain and build up my strength once I reach my ending weight goal.

Odd thing is I really didn't think that I looked that big to begin with, but I'm sure enjoying the way I look now and hearing everyone make comments as well about me. It's funny how people treat you differently after loosing some weight. I mean, I'm still the same person pretty much, just a bit less space being used now.